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Mostly Bloodless Medical Jobs For The Squeamish

A lot of people fancy a career in the medical sector. But when they sit down and really think about what it involves – cutting people open and having their guts spew out – suddenly it doesn’t seem so appealing. But the good news, is that not everybody in healthcare is ripping open chest cavities and reattaching severed limbs. In fact, there are plenty of positions which don’t involve any blood at all.

Don’t let your squeamishness put you off from getting a job in this sector. Here are some of the jobs that are open to you at all levels and qualifications, minimal blood included:

Respiratory Therapist: One of the best ways to become valuable as a healthcare worker is to drill down and focus on a single area of expertise. Respiratory therapists do just that, focusing on helping people who have trouble breathing and doing tests to get to the bottom of their condition. The good thing about becoming a respiratory therapist is that there is comparatively little blood involved. You will have to insert tubes into patients’ windpipes, but if you can get over that hurdle, you’re almost home and dry.

Like other jobs in healthcare, experts believe that the demand for respiratory therapists will remain strong over the next five years, at least. Respiratory therapists are likely to be in high demand thanks to the increasing prevalence of lung-related disorders, such as asthma and COPD. Salaries are competitive. For just a couple of year’s training to get an associate degree, a trained respiratory therapist can take home $60,000 per year.

Nutritionist: Chronic diseases and obesity are currently the major cause of disability in Western countries like the US. Yes, people need heroic medicine if they break their leg, and they need antibiotics when they get an infection, but the vast majority of illness is the result of diet and lifestyle. Your job as a nutritionist is to help people modify their diets, change their habits and chip away at the underlying causes of their illnesses.

A cool thing about being a nutritionist is that by working closely enough with patients, you can help them not only manage their chronic diseases but reverse them, too. The medical literature is full of studies in which people with conditions like heart disease, angina, and diabetes get better, all by shifting their diets to healthier options.

The obesity crisis isn’t going anywhere, and so dietitians are likely to remain on the front lines for a long time to come, helping to motivate people to choose healthier behaviors and options. Pay averages around $57,000 per year, though it’s possible to make more by getting high profile private clients, selling books, and blogging.

Radiologist: Radiologists are doctors with relatively few actual contact hours with patients. They spend most of their time reading up on the latest diagnostic technology and finding out how to best deliver it to their patients. Radiology is currently an exciting field: scanning technologies are progressing at an exponential rate and before long, radiologists will be able to view every cell in the body at sub-micron resolutions, allowing them to pinpoint the exact source of a person’s illness.

As a radiologist, you’re also liable to work with technology in the future, specifically artificial intelligence, perhaps the single most important advance in the medical sector for decades. With the help of AI, radiologists seek and identify diseases in their patients and offer treatment options. According to http://www.wikiprofessional.org/index.php?title=Radiologist_Salary the average salary for a radiologist is $130,000 per year. However, the top 10 percent earn more than $187,000.

Radiation Therapist: The job of a radiation therapist is to administer cancer treatment to patients. Their purpose is to not only operate the equipment itself but explain to patients their treatment options. According to https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/medical-imaging-and-radiotherapy/, you need an accredited degree or postgraduate program to become a radiation therapist. You’ll need all of the training that you can get to adequately monitor the progress of the patient during treatment.

Radiotherapy is expected to increase as the population ages. Currently, around 39 percent of Americans get cancer at some point in their lives. This is projected to rise to 50 percent over the next twenty years. Thus, unless technology changes, the number of radiation therapy jobs is expected to boom by more than 25 percent until 2022. That’s pushing wages up, too. A radiation therapist can earn more than $83,000 per year. What’s more, there’s no blood involved.